Barbara Wurm: Abdenour, I am very grateful to be able to show this powerful, important and impressive film about Frantz Fanon as a world premiere, even though it meant the Algerian film community had to wait a little. I am very much looking forward to this conversation and would like to thank Brigitta Kuster and especially Madeleine Bernstorff for their support and advice. The interview will be conducted in French and subsequently translated.
Madeleine Bernstorff: Your work on this film was a very long process – please tell us how it started.
Abdenour Zahzah: It started when I began to want to make films. I was looking for a subject close to me, close to where I live, in Blida, where this famous hospital is located. Back then, in 1998, I was in charge of the programme at the Cinémathèque in Blida and showed the people at the clinic an English film titled FRANTZ FANON: BLACK SKIN WHITE MASK. They weren’t so into it, but they asked me to film a colloquium on Frantz Fanon. That was when I got to know an incredible team who had worked with Frantz Fanon and had not yet retired, including the nurses and head physician Bachir Ridouh, Fanon’s successor. And it was from him – I was 26 years old at the time – that I learned how a psychiatric hospital works. We filmed for more than three years. I liked the spirit of the clinic; I got infected with the psychiatry virus. Then I started filming the protagonists for my first documentary, FRANTZ FANON: MÉMOIRE D'ASILE. But at some point I wanted to make a feature film. There is a lot of pressure: one simply cannot make mistakes or misrepresent something about the world-famous Frantz Fanon. So I did a lot of documenting and found all of Fanon’s administrative files at the hospital as well as his police file from that time. The hospital was a stronghold of the FLN (Front de libération nationale, or National Liberation Front). The number of dead activists and the number of nurses or doctors among them is striking. Fanon also founded a hospital newspaper for which the patients themselves wrote, and I found all the past issues. So there are many descriptions of everyday life in the hospital. The patients had a film club and sports competitions. This was quite unusual back then. In the 1950s, there was hardly any medication and there were no personal interactions between the doctors and the sick. Fanon was the first doctor to set foot in this courtyard full of sick people, which had a significant impact on the memories of the Blida nurses.
Brigitta Kuster: I would like to come back to the very particular title: “True Chronicles...” In other words, a truthful chronicle of the actual events between 1953 and 1956, from Fanon’s arrival at the hospital to his departure, his resignation. Although it’s a work of fiction, the film adheres very closely to reality, to surviving documents as well as to Fanon’s writings, such as the case descriptions from “Les damnés de la terre” (The Wretched of the Earth). How did you develop this form of chronicle when writing the script and collaborating with the actors? You worked with professional actors but also cast characters that you found on location. So it is also their embodied, lived experiences that you make accessible to us, the viewers.
AZ: The title has to do with what I wanted to say. Frantz Fanon had a very short life. He died at the age of 36, yet he was witness to major events. Firstly, the Second World War. That is a film in itself! He was 17 years old; he was French. People from Martinique are French in their heads, especially back then. There was no television, and in their heads they were French just like all other French people. Fanon responded to de Gaulle’s call to defend France. But when he arrived in France, he discovered a different France than his native Martinique... The people didn't look like him. That was his first shock, a major shock. A war wound then landed him a scholarship to study medicine in Lyon. There were only a few Black students in post-war Lyon. The young Fanon suffers and experiences banal everyday racism. He becomes interested in philosophy. All this is well described in his first book “Peau noire, masques blancs” (Black Skin, White Masks). And then there’s the Algeria part. This is the phase that interested me, because it is the one I could convey with the greatest sincerity. Fanon practices what is close to his heart. He finds himself in Blida in a huge psychiatric hospital with hundreds of sick people. He encounters a people, a colonised people, who remind him of his own wounds, the wounds of a Frenchman from Martinique. He falls in love with these people. And he is on the ground during the Algerian uprising of November 1, 1954, which also has an impact on him. He soon meets the Algerian nationalists. And from there it takes on a new dimension. Newly married, Frantz Fanon was living in Blida in a huge official villa with the salary of a senior employee. But after three years he leaves it all behind, gives up this comfortable status and goes underground. Fanon’s incredible decision became legendary with his letter of resignation to the then Governor General of Algeria. And his decision to join the FLN (Front de libération nationale, National Liberation Front) in turn shaped his philosophical and political thinking, even his thinking as a doctor.
MB: Back to the precision of that long title!
AZ: I wanted to be straightforward with the title of the film. I chose the title to refer to that exact time. Like the Lumière brothers, who gave their films very precise titles: geographical indications of the places where they filmed... I could not find any shorter title that contained the same precision. My film tells only of this period in Blida, which seems to me the richest and most significant period of all, because it brings to light the oft-forgotten side of Fanon as a psychiatrist as well as the now-forgotten theories of the “École d'Alger de psychiatrie.” Forgotten, but still present. The theories of the “École d'Alger de psychiatrie” have a thick skin, as they say in French. They were considered “serious, test-based theories,” as one psychiatrist says in the film. They thought they had discovered that Arabs and, even worse, Black people only use part of their brain for thinking. And now Fanon comes from the hospital in Saint-Alban to this stronghold of racism, carrying the innovative ideas of François Tosquelles. I wanted to tell this story as earnestly and precisely as possible with the means that I had.
BK: The decision to shoot in black and white also seems a fundamental one to me. Then there is this set-up whereby episodes consisting of different shots are edited into shorter or longer sequences to create a linear chronology. The camera almost never moves, remaining more fixed instead as it captures angles, details, perspectives on certain constellations of people and things. The corridors play an essential role, the doorways of interconnected rooms, the stairs, the corners, the lobbies, the vestibules, the entrances and the inner courtyards of the psychiatric ward – it is crucial that you filmed in the places themselves. Tell us something about these constellations of people and places that lend the film its rhythm.
AZ: It was unimaginable for me to shoot the film anywhere other than the hospital in Blida. Fortunately, we received all necessary permissions form the Algerian Ministry of Health as well as the consent of the doctors. Frantz Fanon is very well respected in Blida. The people who work at the hospital revere him. They see him as a legend. People who are really mentally ill should, of course not be filmed, so we adapted to the patients. If we were filming on the ground floor, we would take them up a level and vice versa. Those who were calmer stood to one side and didn’t speak. Sometimes they did speak though …. The architecture of psychiatric hospitals from that time is similar to that of prisons – it is difficult to build a set. There are courtyards, large halls, dormitories and cells. Only one of these cells is left, which is shown at start of the film. There are large windows, but they are barred. I personally adore psychiatry and the smells of psychiatry, which for me are the smells of humanism, but it wasn’t easy for the technical team. But they adapted and it was a discovery for them. We didn’t stay long; we shot very quickly, just two or three days on each ward. There were painters and welders with us; we removed the grilles for filming and then put them back in place afterwards. It was a tough shoot, but it paid off in the images. I also couldn't imagine filming the psychiatric hospital in colour. I did not want to make a spectacular movie that would be a mere diversion. I wanted fixed shots, in the same way the doctors make their observations. This also justifies the “Chronicles” of the title, the length of the sequences, the rhythm. It is a chronicle of those three years. The real boss of a psychiatric clinic is its head physician. Then there are the patients. And the nurses. And the relatives of patients, because you visit your family members. And there are those who recover, which means there are discharges. Back then, some of the inmates were also committed by force, the ‘placements d’office’. The police used to bring people to the hospital, as is shown in the film, by official order of the prefect, and then unfortunately – and this still exists today – there were family members who brought one of their own to the hospital in order to disinherit them. Fanon tried to counteract this a little bit by setting up a day clinic. In the day clinic, it is the doctor who prescribes short-term therapy for the patient. However, Fanon also did this for political reasons. The aim was to take in FLN activists under a different name.
MB: How was it working with the actors, both the main characters as well as the extras, and especially lead actor Alexandre Desane, who plays Fanon? Can you tell us about that?
AZ: Alexandre Desane! It was an incredible stroke of luck to meet him. I wanted someone from the Antilles, like Fanon. A friend of mine, an Algerian director, pointed me in the direction of Alexandre, an actor with Haitian roots. He was an incredible partner throughout the production, which lasted three years because of COVID. Many of the actors eventually gave up, except Alexandre who stayed until the end. He became my collaborator and accomplice on this film. For one, he had a strong affinity for Fanon, but above all, he was fed up with being offered nothing but roles as drug dealers or rapists. He loves being an actor, but at the same time he is an IT specialist. He was intelligent enough to keep that profession so he can choose the acting roles he likes. I cast role of Ramée from a photo: Gérard Dubouche. Like the character, he is from an Algerian-French family – his mother comes from a medical background in Algeria, so he was also very close to his role. Amal Kateb, Kader Affak, Omar Boularkirba, the head nurse, were also very good actors for their roles. In a hospital, there are the nurses and the patients. The extras were essential. They were from Blida and were very rigorous. They were people who had worked in theatre; it was easy for them to take part. They understood the context and the importance of their roles. The same applies to Olivier Fanon, son of Frantz Fanon – that was Alexandre Desane’s idea. Olivier agreed to play the role of Fanon’s childhood friend Marcel Manville, a great anti-colonial activist as well as a lawyer. So Olivier Fanon as Marcel Manville comes to save his dad in one scene.
BK: I would like to ask about the significance of Fanon for our society today. Tosquelles is quoted in the film on the concept of institutional psychotherapy, according to which one must heal not only the sick, but above all the institution. Your film also shows how the violence of colonial Algeria makes an incursion into the hospital. The incursion of terror. You show us the time of the rise of the FLN, the rise of terror in that society and also in the hospital. So the question is how to heal not only the institutions, but also society as a whole. Given this, what is the significance of Fanon today? In Algeria, of course, but perhaps also more generally.
AZ: I think Fanon is still very relevant on a political level. First of all in Algeria, where people are suffering greatly under the effects of post-colonialism. And this applies to the whole of Africa and to all formerly colonised countries. Because sadly, as I show at the end of the film, colonisation leaves indelible marks. The wounds go very deep. Today’s Algeria is independent; its people are independent. But is their spirit also independent? I am not sure. People feel incapable of taking any step forward. Those who emigrate may sometimes thrive, but they are incapable of emancipating themselves in their own country. I think this is a psychological problem. Essentially, we don’t trust ourselves when we are in our country. These are the vestiges of colonisation. Fanon wrote a great deal about this in his last book. He was also quite sure that those in power would reproduce the patterns of the former colonial rulers. And that they would usher in a new bourgeoisie that could be worse than that of the colonial rulers, disguised under false pretences. And on a more global level? Frantz Fanon understood that colonisation causes devastation over a long period of time, the true extent of which has not yet been grasped by neither the coloniser nor the colonised. For colonisation creates unhealthy relationships, which has devastating effects on mental health... But to offer a little hope: I would say that if we become really aware of this phenomenon, and reflect on our situation as someone from the South or the North, from the East or the West, we can take ourselves out of the situation to some extent – that’s the acuity of Fanon’s theories.
BK: Madness is also a way out, a form of escape. There are two actors in the film, a duo that appears in secondary scenes without dialogue. They often show up at the periphery of the narrative, for example during the soccer scene, while sweeping the street, or listening to a speech. They don't really add to the plot, yet they tell us something. It's this something that strikes me – it is almost nothing, but it does carry weight. It conveys some bigger thing with gestures and in micro-situations. Are they memories that are retained in the bodies? I see a correlation here in the relationship between fiction, documentary and reality. I think we’re dealing with the imaginary here, that’s a more apt term. There's something in this fact of narrating nothing special and at the same time narrating everything that the film narrates. This non-narrating of anything special and yet at the same time narrating everything: this is what the film conveys.
AZ: The movie is a work of fiction about Fanon, because Fanon is no longer here. But at the same time it is a documentary about the hospital and the people who live there, because there are people who live in the hospital and die there. In fact, when I was shooting my documentary in 1998, I found patients who had been there since Fanon’s time, forgotten by their families. And when they went into the city, they returned there; the hospital had become their home. I tried to portray them through characters that also document something about the hospital. There is a soccer pitch that was built by Fanon, the nurses and the patients. When I was little – I remember this because my father was a footballer – the hospital had a football team that played in various leagues. We also found the farm during location scouting. The farm seen in the movie with the cows was the hospital’s real farm. It actually still exists, though it no longer belongs to the hospital, but to farmers. I rediscovered this incredible laundry, which no longer works the way it once did with these big machines, big chimneys ...
MB: So you've also created a documentary on the history of the hospital!
AZ: I wanted the people in the hospital to remember these places. In this sense, the film also has documentary qualities. I wanted to document everyday life in the hospital. And then I had this character duo who are sometimes fighting each other, sometimes friends – that’s the life of the mentally ill. The former patients become characters of the hospital, its poetry. I think the film would be difficult to watch without this. I also tried to show the hospital’s activities in sewing and pottery. I even found carpentry and blacksmithing tools. I remember as a child we used to go to the hospital on weekends and buy things from the patients there – tables or chairs, handicrafts. They made many things to sell, to earn a little money. In the theories of Tosquelles and in psychiatry, money is a very important concept in the recovery process. Because working and earning money means one is actually cured. And this is no longer the case. Since medication has been available, all over the world, it has become heavily relied upon. People get medicated and locked up. It is much more complicated when the ill can work. If they were actually to work, that would be the real recovery. And above all, they have achieved miracles. I have a living room table that the patients made themselves. Since they tend to be paranoid, they do very good work. By the way, I’m like that too. I tried to be paranoid on this film. I wanted to be as accurate as possible. I'm certainly infected as well ...
